Kogan jumps onboard Rackspace public cloud

Rackspace has launched its first public cloud offering in Australia with online retailer Kogan, becoming an early adopter of the product through a hybrid cloud arrangement.

The hosting and cloud services provider opened its first Australian datacentre in August located at Erskine Park, Sydney. It initially offered managed virtualisation from the datacentre, and had plans to flesh out the offerings with time.

Up until now, Rackspace Australia had only been offering private cloud services. According to the company, the draw card of its new public cloud offering is that it is powered by the OpenStack open-source operating system for cloud computing that is supported by a some of the biggest IT vendors in the world, including Intel, AMD, and Red Hat.

Kogan is moving its local IT infrastructure into Rackspace's hybrid cloud, which will enhance the shopping experience for users of Kogan.com, according to the retailer's director of technology, Goran Stefkosvki.

"We believe that a hybrid cloud opportunity changes the way Australian businesses will make their cloud-buying decisions," Rackspace Australia general manager Angus Dorney said in a statement.

While the company is offering stand-alone public cloud services through its Australian datacentre, there are no customers using the local offering just yet. It does, however, have existing Australian customers using Rackspace's public cloud offering overseas.

Rackspace is gearing the hybrid cloud service at enterprise and government agencies that value on-shore data hosting.